Ship of Fools: Medical effects of being dead 4 days

Thread: Medical effects of being dead 4 days Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by NJA (# 13022) on :

I was reading John 11 about the raising of Lazarus, in v39 Martha says:
"Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days".

Wouldn't being dead have starved the brain of oxygen? What does modern medical science predict the effects would be?

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by NJA:
I was reading John 11 about the raising of Lazarus, in v39 Martha says:
"Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days".

Wouldn't being dead have starved the brain of oxygen? What does modern medical science predict the effects would be?

I've always looked at it this way: if you believe God raised Jesus from the dead, then no other miracle in the Bible is much of a conceptual problem.

Posted by NJA (# 13022) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I've always looked at it this way: if you believe God raised Jesus from the dead, then no other miracle in the Bible is much of a conceptual problem.

I don't have conceptual problem, I just want medical details of what God did.

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

Seems to me that if you are going to go in for believing in this miracle business, you would be better going for = full reversal of all processes associated with mortality.

Otherwise you are going to have to think of Jesus going 'Come forth, Lazarus' and then thinking: Drat. Just invented zombies.

Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on :

The medical explanation would be, he wasn't really dead - he was in a coma. In which case, revival after four days would have similar effects - probably - to a moderately severe head injury. Lowered IQ, mood instability and fatigue; with some degree of memory loss going back to prior a period prior to unconsciousness and some stroke like difficulties affecting language for example.

Folk brought back from death in today's world are a successfully revived because they have been very cold and therefore decomposition has not taken place.

If he stank because his leg had gangrene, but he had been kept ina very cold cave in winter - maybe. Otherwise, you'll just have to go for the traditional miraculous explanation.

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

I think NJA is looking for details of what a 4-day old dead body, especially one in 1st century Palestine with the embalming practices used at the time, would be. Because in raising Lazarus from the dead, God would've undone all those things too.

It certainly is different from the raising of someone who was only dead for a few moments, and also quite different from Jesus' Resurrection, which isn't a reversal of death but a New Thing Altogether.

I suspect that the question of the oxygen-starved brain has to do with modern instances where someone was dead for x number of minutes and then revived - at some point, if the brain's been starved of oxygen, there can be permanent brain damage, right?

Is that more or less what you're getting at, NJA?

Posted by NJA (# 13022) on :

quote:
Originally posted by churchgeek:
...
I suspect that the question of the oxygen-starved brain has to do with modern instances where someone was dead for x number of minutes and then revived - at some point, if the brain's been starved of oxygen, there can be permanent brain damage, right?

Is that more or less what you're getting at, NJA?

Yes, we see that the Jews believed in healing of limbs and organs that hadn't worked for years, but they had a disconnect when it came to death... "when you're dead, you're dead" type thought. I am told that decomposition of all the internal organs takes place very quickly. That's why first-responders, such as paramedics, know that unless they get to the scene of a person who has suffered cardiac arrest within 4 minutes maximum, or else have someone already on the scene giving that person cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) to keep blood and oxygen circulating before they arrive, the chances of survival are slim to nil.
In the case of Lazarus' being raised from the dead, not only did his brain need to be completely 'rebuilt', but also every other organ in his body (including his eyes and ears), his skeletal structure (because of the bone marrow), and all of the body's surface tissue and blood vessels.

Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :

I think this episode of CSI: Palestine would fit better in Purg.

Firenze
Heaven Host

Posted by NJA (# 13022) on :

Well, there is a faith aspect.

The medical details explain the "dis-connect" in their thinking - they believed Jesus can cure the sick but "when your dead, your dead".
Although, they had already witnessed Jesus healing limbs and organs that had been "dead" for years, so if they believed that was possible there was reason to believe Jesus could raise the dead after 4 days.

I believe Jesus groaned and wept because of their unbelief:

"When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled,
And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept.
Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him!
And some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?
Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it ... Said I not unto you, that, if you would believe, thou should see the glory of God?" (John 11:33-40)

[ 07. July 2013, 06:51: Message edited by: NJA ]

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

There are no medical effects. There's putrefaction. Fermentation. There is no material way back, ever, no reboot. Unless we develop - which we won't, can't, ever - Ian M. Banks' (boy am I looking forward to shaking him by the hand) neural lace. Except elsewhere in the mind of God.

The Holy Ghost did a full system restore from a Platonically ideal enough Lazarus.

Posted by Arabella Purity Winterbottom (# 3434) on :

I had the experience a few years ago of working with a lady from Africa. One morning I went to pick her up to take her to the dentist. As we left her building, I preceded her and nearly fell over a woman who had passed out on the footpath. I immediately got down and checked she was breathing, and rang 111. I looked up to ask my African lady to give me a hand. She was standing with her hands over her head, sobbing, "Oh God, she is dead, she is dead." No matter what I said (and no matter that the woman on the ground was visibly breathing) she refused to believe that we weren't dealing with a corpse.

After about 10 minutes of waiting for the ambulance, we had gathered up about 15 or so Africans, all standing wailing with their hands up that the woman was dead. By this stage the woman was beginning to stir, so it was even more peculiar.

It gave me a strange new view of Lazarus, I can tell you. (And yes, these were highly traumatised African refugees who had been through wars and refugee camps.)

Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
Otherwise you are going to have to think of Jesus going 'Come forth, Lazarus' and then thinking: Drat. Just invented zombies.

***Entirely NSFW***

The Fist of Jesus

***Entirely NSFW***

Posted by DouglasTheOtter (# 17681) on :

That film is genius.

Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

quote:
Originally posted by NJA:
"Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days".

Given the state of personal hygiene at the time, wouldn't someone lying unconscious but alive for four days stinketh also?

Posted by Pine Marten (# 11068) on :

Doesn't anyone remember that scene when Buffy's decomposed corpse is lying in its grave, and witchy Willow zaps her back to life? Reversing all the decomposing, stinking and all? Simples. Except the bit where Buffy has to crawl her way out in terror...

...sorry, the heat has got to me and I'm playing Borodin and other Russian composers in an attempt to imagine snowy days and cool down... [Ultra confused]

Posted by The Silent Acolyte (# 1158) on :

NJA, try this on for size.

Time is a creature.

The physiological effects of death are a result of chemical processes running forward in time.

Since the Kingdom of Heaven stands outside of time, it is entirely simple to imagine these chemical processes, proximate to Lazarus's corpse, running backward.

So, one doesn't have to imagine all the sleight-of-hand the Almighty needs to accomplish to install fresh blood, fresh lymph, a new functioning brain, and all the rest.

All one needs to imagine is the Almighty "walking the cat back," running all the chemical reactions backward in the same coordinated fashion that they ran forward leading up to and after Lazarus's death.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

The stench of a fermenting corpse tops even good BO. Knew a guy once and you could smell him coming round the corner. I mean really. But a four day old corpse in the Med.

I like it The Silent Acolyte. A fine piece of rationalization predicated on the paradoxical premiss. Everything's a clock except God who nonetheless has to be clocky.

So you rewind to the point of some nasty premature death, do you just keep rewinding until you go back past the cause, let 'er roll forward and alleviate the cause? What if it's genetic?

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

Kazantzakis dealt with this in The Last Temptation of Christ--Lazarus is really bummed out that he's raised from the dead, but nobody wants to hang out with him because he stinks.

Posted by NJA (# 13022) on :

Jesus was able to preserve his own body until the third day so that it "didn't see corruption" (Acts 2:31) ... what's one more among friends?

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

How did He do that seeing as He didn't exist? Or had He cast a spell on Himself before He died?

Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :

quote:
Originally posted by NJA:
Jesus was able to preserve his own body until the third day so that it "didn't see corruption" (Acts 2:31) ... what's one more among friends?

No he didn't:
"For you will not leave my soul in sheol; neither will you allow your Holy One to see corruption."
Psalm 16 v 10

It was God who preserved the body of Jesus, not Jesus himself.

As far as the reversal of death stuff is concerned, we just believe that the Holy Spirit is 'the Lord, the Giver of Life.'

Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
The stench of a fermenting corpse tops even good BO.

True. But I once found it necessary to summon the police to the apartment of my neighbor, who apparently had been dead for about a week. What tipped me off was the smell I noticed when passing by her door -- a combination of urine, feces and vomit, it seemed to me.

Ostensibly my neighbor had recently bathed before breathing her last, but I can well imagine that a simple woman in biblical times could have been fooled by the stench of a man lying unconscious but alive for four days, probably in his own urine, feces and perhaps even vomit.

Posted by Pine Marten (# 11068) on :

A simple woman? What about the other family members, the neighbours, the doctors who presumably tended to a sick man? Are we saying that Lazarus was not dead? How would any of them have smelled the stench anyway, until the stone was rolled away?

Posted by Caissa (# 16710) on :

Or is the story simply myth.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Yeah, Jesus was just this guy, you know?

Posted by Carex (# 9643) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
... the stench of a man lying unconscious but alive for four days, probably in his own urine, feces and perhaps even vomit.

Those are typically due to incontinence in the process of dying, not after death. If he had been in a coma and thought to be dead there wouldn't necessarily be any, and the body also would have been cleaned in preparation for burial.

In my experience recovering bodies that were up to 2 days old in warm weather, there was not yet a bad stench. It takes a while for bacteria to begin the process of decomposition, and initially the byproducts are contained by the skin as long as it hasn't been broken.

Posted by Hawk (# 14289) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
I can well imagine that a simple woman in biblical times could have been fooled by the stench of a man lying unconscious but alive for four days, probably in his own urine, feces and perhaps even vomit.

Of course those primitive ancient foreigners couldn't possibly have known the difference between a dead body and a comatose body. It's not like they personally washed and cleaned the body, or lived much closer to death than us. Being so primitive and simple-minded they must have just panicked and run around screaming every time someone fell asleep. [Roll Eyes]

The stench of a corpse isn't the only sign of death. Lividity and rigor mortis are both easily observable signs and very evident in the first few hours to days of death. First century Jews weren't idiots. They knew a dead body when they saw one. And Lazarus was dead.

Posted by Pine Marten (# 11068) on :

Well said, Hawk.

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